Social Housing Occupancy

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) for bringing forward this debate. She has already spoken very eloquently and in detail about the issue of overcrowding in social housing and its impact on health, life expectancy and education. Although her constituency is in London and mine is in the north of England, we face identical issues and this is a national crisis. Indeed, I would say that the shortage of housing is one of the single biggest domestic issues that we face in our country.

In Bolton, the 2021 census showed that 7,000 homes were judged to be overcrowded, and of those 3,840 were households with dependent children—that is thousands of families with children forced to share beds with other family members and forced into cramped conditions without personal space. That is caused by a chronic housing shortage, which is forcing people into the private sector where the rents are unaffordable.

The Minister will tell us that homes will be built in the future. Let me remind him that when his Government came into power in 2010, they cut funding for affordable housing by 63%: the biggest cut to any capital budget. They also cut funding for new homes and social rents, thus causing rapid decline in the building of social homes. The Government have just not built enough homes, especially three and four-bedroom homes.

I have many constituents living in small houses with ill family members who need a room to themselves but they cannot have it. That of course causes a lot of disturbance and problems within the family, especially for children going to school. In fact, I was talking to a constituent yesterday who lives in a tiny two-bedroom home with three children and she is severely ill herself. She is desperate to move into a bigger home, but knows that she will have many years of waiting. That kind of thing has a lot of impact. In fact, covid impacted my constituency massively because as a result of overcrowding there was no space for the families to go and quarantine. Overcrowding affects children’s education and health. It harms family relationships and causes distress and anxiety.

The Government have had 14 years to build many, many social houses, but have chosen not to do so because they have an ideological objection to social housing. If they did not, they would have built them by now and many of my constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green and other Members across the country would not have to face these issues.